Ooops! Myanmar discovers it has only 51 million people

Aug. 29, 2014
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A group of women sweep an area at Myanmar's Shwedagon Pagoda. / Khin Maung Win/AP

by USA TODAY

by USA TODAY

YANGON, Myanmar - Myanmar has discovered it has only 51 million people - far less than the previously estimated 60 million.

State-run television announced on Friday the preliminary results from the country's first census in three decades. It said complete results would be released next year.

The census was conducted from March 30 to April 10 with help from the U.N. Population Fund. The previous estimate of 60 million was based on extrapolations from the last census, conducted in 1983.

The tally went smoothly, except in areas controlled by ethnic Kachin rebels and in the western state of Rakhine, where an estimated 800,000 members of a long-persecuted Muslim minority were denied the right to identify themselves as "Rohingya."

The government insists they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh and calls them "Bengalis."

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